The Five-Hour Cage

For five hours a day,
students are packed into the same room,
each expected to study alone.
Isn’t that five hours of forced isolation?
In an age of advanced communication,
what do we call a culture that deliberately separates people like this?
All for the sake of getting into a better college?
Sitting at a desk barely three feet wide,
for five hours straight—
it’s harsh. It’s exhausting.
There’s no need for bars or walls.
When grades become the only goal,
we confine, we pressure, we hold students captive for hours.
But what truly matters is motivation.
Finding a dream—and a dream beyond that—
is the strongest fuel.
When students are inspired,
they don’t need to be locked in.
They focus on their own.
And the grades? They follow naturally.

motivation, isolation, pressure